This invention relates generally to material distributing mechanisms and, more particularly, to a conveyor attachment mountable to the back of a dump truck to receive material such as stone therefrom and project the material to a desired location remote from the truck.
It has been found desirable to deposit flowable material, such as stone or sand, at a location remote from the location from which a truck bearing such material can reach. For example, a truck carrying stone to be spread around the floor base of a foundation prior to having concrete poured for the floor may only be able to reach one location close to the foundation, whereas the stone must be uniformly spread throughout the foundation base. Rather than carry the stone throughout the foundation to be spread manually, it would be desirable to have an apparatus to receive the stone from the truck and distribute the stone throughout the foundation from the single point of discharge from the truck.
Conveying mechanisms have been developed to accomplish this desired task, such as can be seen in U.S. Pat. No. 5,044,867, issued to M. J. Pettijohn on Sep. 3, 1991. This particularly conveying device suffers from the problem of being too large and bulky. Even though the Pettijohn conveying mechanism collapses into a transport position, the mechanism commands a significant amount of room behind the vehicle and adds a significant amount of weight to the rear of the truck. Furthermore, the Pettijohn apparatus is limited in flexibility in usage because of the support required for the end of the conveyor and the large amount of room required for utilization. For example, depositing materials close to the truck would be difficult.
Other dispensing mechanisms are known in the art, such as the conveyor disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,018,908, issued to H. C. Wilton on Jan. 30, 1962. It is noted that such conveying mechanisms are generally used to discharge material laterally of the truck, although other unloading mechanisms, such as the conveyor disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 1,448,835, issued to A. W. Egger on Mar. 20, 1923, are intended to be used to deposit material either rearwardly or laterally of the vehicle.
Each of these known unloading or conveying mechanisms are rather large and bulky in nature and have a limited range of use. Most of these mechanisms use a belt conveyor which has a maximum speed of operation due to the tendency of the belt to slip from underneath the material being conveyed thereon, thereby limiting the range at which the material can be discharged from the apparatus. While the contact on the material with the conveyor belt can be improved by extending the length of the conveyor belt, as is taught in the aforementioned prior art references, any lengthening of the apparatus results in a direct loss of flexibility in use and compactness for transport.
It would, therefore, be desirable to provide a material distributing mechanism cooperable with a mobile vehicle that would be sufficiently compact to permit an unobtrusive positioning for an inoperative transport, while providing an apparatus that has great flexibility in use to deposit material dispensed from the vehicle along a large range of locations.